Knowledge and the Curriculum A collection of essays to accompany E. D. Hirsch’s lecture at Policy Exchange Edited by Jonathan Simons and Natasha Porter Knowledge and the Curriculum A collection of essays to accompany E. D. Hirsch’s lecture at Policy Exchange Edited by Jonathan Simons and Natasha Porter Policy Exchange is the UK’s leading think tank. We are an educational charity whose mission is to develop and promote new policy ideas that will deliver better public services, a stronger society and a more dynamic economy. The authority and credibility of our research is our greatest asset. Our research is independent and evidence-based, and we share our ideas with policymakers from all sides of the political spectrum. Our research is strictly empirical and we do not take commissions. This allows us to be completely independent and make workable policy recommendations. For more information please contact us at: Clutha House, 10 Storey’s Gate, London, SW1P 3AY. Alternatively we can be contacted on 020 7340 2650 and at [email protected] Trustees David Frum (Chairman of the Board), Diana Berry, Simon Brocklebank-Fowler, Robin Edwards, Candida Gertler, Greta Jones, Charlotte Metcalf, Krishna Rao, Andrew Roberts, George Robinson, Robert Rosenkranz, Charles Stewart-Smith, Peter Wall, Simon Wolfson. © Policy Exchange 2015 Published by Policy Exchange, Clutha House, 10 Storey’s Gate, London SW1P 3AY www.policyexchange.org.uk ISBN: 978-1-910812-01-3 Printed by Heron, Dawson and Sawyer Designed by Soapbox, www.soapbox.co.uk Contents Acknowledgements 4 About the Authors 5 Foreword 8 1. How E. D. Hirsch Came to Shape UK Government Policy Nick Gibb MP 12 2. Assessment Knowledge Daisy Christodoulou 21 3. Knowledge and Character James O’Shaughnessy 29 4. How Knowledge Leads to Self Esteem Katharine Birbalsingh 36 5. Which Knowledge Matters Most? Prof Chris Husbands 43 6. An Inclusive Curriculum for All: Knowledge and the National Baccalaureate Tom Sherrington 51 7. Curriculum Theory, Educational Traditionalism and the Academic Disciplines: Reviving the Liberal Philosophy of Education Michael Fordham 55 8. ‘So who says that a 12 year-old should learn that?’ Confused Issues of Knowledge and Authority in Curriculum Thinking Tim Oates 64 9. The Next Curriculum Reform: A Liberal Democrat View Matthew Sanders 75 Acknowledgements We are very grateful to Inspiration Trust and Cambridge Assessment for their support in putting on the Annual Lecture, and to Jo Saxton and all at Pimlico Academy for hosting it. Many thanks to all the contributors to this collection of essays for their informed and thoughtful contributions to the topics raised in the lecture. Above all, thanks go to E. D. Hirsch for giving up the time to fly to the UK and share his views with policymakers and practitioners in this lecture. About the Authors Nick Gibb MP was appointed Minister of State at the Department for Education on 15 July 2014. He was elected Conservative MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton in 1997. As Minister for Schools, Nick’s responsibilities include oversight of the curriculum and as- sessment in schools, where he has been greatly influenced by the work of E. D. Hirsch. Daisy Christodoulou is the Research and Development Manager at Ark Schools, where she works on new approaches to curricu- lum and assessment. Before that, she trained as a secondary English teacher through the Teach First programme and taught in two Lon- don comprehensives. Her book, Seven Myths about Education, was published in March 2014. She has been part of government com- missions on the future of ITT and assessing without levels. James O’Shaughnessy is the Managing Director of Floreat Educa- tion, a multi academy trust running primary schools. He is also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Jubilee Centre for Char- acter and Values. James was Director of Policy and Research for Prime Minister David Cameron between 2007 and 2011, latterly in No.10 Downing Street, and prior to that was deputy director at Policy Exchange, where he published and edited several reports on school reform. James was made a peer by the Prime Minister in the Dissolution Honours List 2015. Katharine Birbalsingh is the Headteacher of Michaela Community School in Brent, a free school which opened in September 2014 which she helped found. She is a regular commentator in the media on education issues and has written frequently on a wide range of topics. She is also the author of two novels. 6 | Knowledge and the Curriculum Professor Chris Husbands is the Director of the UCL Institute of Education, ranked as the world’s leading university for Education in the 2014 QS World University Rankings. He was previously director of the Institute of Education at the University of Warwick. He also led the independent Skills Taskforce for the Labour party during the last Parliament. Chris will become the Vice Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University in January 2016. Tom Sherrington has been the Headteacher of Highbury Grove School in Islington since 2014. Previously, he was Headteacher of King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford. Tom is one of the founders of the National Baccalaureate Trust and is a core member of the Headteachers’ Roundtable, set up in 2012. He has also been appointed to the Teachers’ Professional Development Expert Group. Michael Fordham is an Assistant Headteacher at West London Free School and Affiliated Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. Mi- chael completed his doctoral research under Christine Counsell and Philip Gardner on subject-specificity in the school curriculum. He then taught history at Hinchingbrooke School, and was Head of His- tory at Cottenham Village College before working at the University of Cambridge. Michael was the Outstanding-Educator-in-Residence for the Singapore Ministry of Education in 2014 and since 2010 has been an editor of the journal Teaching History. Tim Oates is the Group Director of Assessment Research and De- velopment at Cambridge Assesment. Tim has advised the UK Gov- ernment for many years on both practical matters and assessment policy, and is particularly experienced in international use of core knowledge curricula. Tim chaired the Department for Education’s recent review and expert panel for the National Curriculum. He was previously at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), About the Authors | 7 where he had been Head of Research and Statistics for most of the last decade. Tim was awarded a CBE in the New Years Honours list for services to education Matthew Sanders was Special Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg MP, until the end of the Coalition Government in May 2015, covering the Department for Education; the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and the Cabinet Office. In that period he also spent two years as a Policy Fellow at the Cambridge University Centre for Science and Policy, and was an elected councillor in the London Borough of Camden. Later this year he will take up a new role as a Policy Director in the Ministry of Education, New Zealand. Foreword It is a great privilege to be welcoming Professor E. D. Hirsch to speak at our second annual Policy Exchange education lecture. Hirsch has been enormously influential in the world of education in recent years, both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Recently his work has inspired major curriculum initiatives, includ- ing the introduction of Common Core State Standards in the United States and the reformed national curriculum in England. Alongside this, in Britain Civitas has published an Anglicised version of the core knowledge curriculum developed by Hirsch, which has been implemented by a range of primary schools. At Policy Exchange, Hirsch’s work on the importance of knowledge and cultural capital in schools has inspired much of our work on education. We are in total agreement with his assertion that a traditional, academic ap- proach is the best way to raise standards in schools, and eventually to achieve social justice. The influence Hirsch has had on the English education sector in recent years is no doubt how we have managed to engage such an impressive list of contributors for this essay collection. The authors here include experts in policy, classroom practice and assessment, and represent many of today’s great education thinkers. We hope you find their viewpoints as interesting as we have, and that their essays both expand and deepen your thoughts on curriculum, pedagogy, and the wider education system. The essays which follow all approach Hirsch’s work from slightly different perspectives, and this helps us understand the broad impact which his ideas have had on our education system. Perhaps the most obvious of these comes from reading the essay by schools minister Nick Gibb MP, who describes how he discovered Hirsch’s work as shadow Minister for Schools in 2005, and how his ideas have given shape and definition to Gibb’s own beliefs Foreword | 9 about education ever since. As a result of his influence on Gibb, and Gibb’s subsequent introduction of Hirsch’s ideas to the former Secretary of State for education, Michael Gove MP, Hirsch has had a profound impact on educational policy reform in England since the 2010 election. Many of our essayists explain that part of the attraction to Hirsch was the impact of his work on closing the gap. Two senior leaders of urban London schools have particularly focused on this. Michael Fordham, the Assistant Headteacher of West London Free School, argues that it is exactly Hirsch’s repositioning of a traditional knowledge curriculum as non-elitist which makes his argument so strong. Not only does Hirsch argue that the goal of building knowl- edge and developing cultural capital is to achieve social justice, he also explains why progressive education leads to the opposite.